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EAL - Instant Drink Cooler (IDC)

Introduction: EAL - Instant Drink Cooler (IDC)

This Instructable shows you how to build an instant drink cooling machine. The drink cooling machine works by pouring cold water over a spinning drink, either a can or a bottle. This method helps cool down the bottle material, while the fluid inside is mixed.

Step 1: Materials

In this project I have used:

One cordless drill motor, with the gearing and the speed controller

The battery of the cordless drill ( 12V )

A windshield washer pump

An Arduino Uno R3

One LCD display

A rotary encoder with clickbutton

One relay module

Various pieces of wire

M3 nuts and bolts

A USB power bank, for powering the Arduino, due to the onboard voltage regulator being underpowered for this purpose.

Furthermore, the cordless drill has an LED attached. This looks nice but is not necessary!

Step 2: Tank - Design and Assembly

The tank is made out of acrylic glass.

The design of the tank was done using a 3D sketch program, which provides a base for the whole building process. Making the sketch creates a design template on where to cut pieces of acrylic glass, and where to mount the different parts.

The tank itself is made out of 5 sheets of acrylic glass in various sizes, which are scored with a knife, and thereafter, broken along the score line. To glue the pieces together, acrylic glue is used. In this example, Acrifix 1R 0192 was used, which is hardened by UV light.

A step drill is a nice tool to work with in these sheet sizes, because it has several steps with different hole diameters.

Step 3: Machine Assembly

The machine is assembled with the rod attached to a bearing part on one end, and the motor on the other. The motor and gear is screwed directly onto the tank, and it is press fitted to the shaft.

The LCD, Arduino, and the rotary encoder are bolted to the front panel after being fitted in their respective slots.

The water hose from the pump is run along the back up to its bracket along with the LED from the cordless drill. A holder for the battery was printed, allowing for the battery poles to connect the right way. This was then attached with zip-ties.

Step 5: Schematics

Step 6: 3D Parts

Various parts of the machine have been printed by a 3D printer.

This includes the motor shaft that connects the motor to the rotary shaft, a shaft holder that acts as a bearing (a bearing would have been better), and a motor bracket that press fits onto the gearing, and attaches, with screws, onto the motor and tank.

If you want to check out the 3D parts, I have attached most of them here as STL files.

Attachments

Step 7: Function

The drink cooler can cool cans and 0.5L plastic bottles. First, fill the tank with two litres of water. Next, plug in the batteries. The onboard screen starts at "Start", from here you can scroll either way to "Run time". If you press the encoder, you can choose the time for the machine to run. The standard runtime is 60 seconds. You can press the encoder again to return to the main menu. Here, you can scroll back to "Start", and press the encoder to begin the cooling process. The Arduino will then time the process, and print the remaining time onto the LCD screen. When it is done, the process stops and returns to the main menu. If you want the machine to stop while the process is running, simply press the encoder.